Tight Labor Supply Puts Brakes on Florida Construction Rebound

Supply and demand drives markets. In Florida, rising demand for construction is hitting an obstacle: a restricted supply of construction labor. The Observer has this report: ("Labor shortfall threatens construction boom," by Nolan Peterson).

"After five years of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a shortage of skilled labor threatens to take the wind out of the sails of Sarasota's resurrected construction industry," the paper reports. "The problem is that a lack of workers threatens to drive up construction costs and limit the amount of projects contractors are able to tackle."

It's not just a matter of rising cost for labor. In fact, wages may not be rising at all—instead, contractors who can't find enough good help are just turning down jobs. Reports the Observer: "Brian Jones, director of development for Core Construction, said he noticed smaller sub-contractors turning down jobs, but it wasn't until CECO Concrete Construction, the nation's largest concrete subcontractor, stopped taking new jobs in Florida for 2014 that the scale of the problem became apparent.'

"That caught us off guard," Jones told the Observer. "We didn't expect a contractor as big as that to start canceling jobs."